From Lower Disease Risk Perception to Higher News Avoidance: Analysis of News Consumption and Attitude Toward COVID-19 News in Latvia
Sandra Murinska 1 * ,
Anda Rožukalne 2,
Ieva Strode 3 More Detail
1 Rezekne Academy of Technologies, LATVIA
2 Riga Stradiņš University, LATVIA
3 University of Latvia, LATVIA
* Corresponding Author
Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, Volume 12, Issue 3, Article No: e202216.
https://doi.org/10.30935/ojcmt/12026
OPEN ACCESS 2737 Views 1108 Downloads Published online: 16 Apr 2022
ABSTRACT
Recognizing that regular information during a pandemic helps societies navigate through a period of insecurity, the aim of this study is to understand how news about different aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic affects the attitude of media audiences towards news. This study seeks to explain the society’s news consumption and the attitude towards COVID-19 news in Latvia linking it to self-evaluation of the perceived disease risk. A national survey data (September 2020, N=1,005) analysis shows a statistically significant but weak correlation between disease risk self-evaluation and the attitude towards pandemic news. Respondents who rate the risk of the disease as higher and real are more interested in news, consume news to create a sense of security, feel less fatigue towards news, and are less likely to avoid COVID-19 news. Respondents who believe that the risk of illness is low and unreal, are less interested in news, feel more tired, avoid the news more often.
CITATION
Murinska, S., Rožukalne, A., & Strode, I. (2022). From Lower Disease Risk Perception to Higher News Avoidance: Analysis of News Consumption and Attitude Toward COVID-19 News in Latvia.
Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, 12(3), e202216.
https://doi.org/10.30935/ojcmt/12026
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